entropys

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entropys
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  • Australia's Bendigo Bank adds Apple Pay, having lost fight over iPhone NFC

    entropysentropys
    Bendigo Bank was once a regional credit union that has successfully grown into a bank. Its market niche is regional areas where “The Big Four” have withdrawn shopfront services. It markets itself as a kinda anti-corporate bank. The model has been reasonably successful and Bendigo owns a couple of the smaller banks like Adelaide Bank, and currently has the contract with the Victorian State Government to supply concessional loan programs for rural assistance through Rural Bank. Plenty of stories of typical bank behaviour though.

    So to sum up, a littlish bank, but not that little.  Medium sized in the Oz market. I am surprised it tried to develop and promote its own solution rather than just adopt Apple Pay. What a waste of corporate resources and shareholder value.
    ANZ is the one of the Big Four that has Apple Pay, and promotes it heavily. The rest of the finance industry that have Apple Pay (a growing list) tend to be smaller than Bendigo.
    The remaining three of the Big Four, Westpac, Commonwealth and National are still pushing their own, little used payment apps. They won’t be successful but it will take a while for the self important, MBA execs who championed these strategies to either admit they are wrong or get sacked.
    SoliJWSCGG1Anilu_777watto_cobracharlesatlas

  • Apple officially discontinues AirPort router product line, available while supplies last [...

    entropysentropys
    Thing is, the apple of old provided a complete ecosystem that just worked.
    now, there are new innovative ideas that are released, then just left to whither with no further development (eg 3D Touch, HomeKit) or half arsed (eg homepod). The airport could have been the classic marriage of hardware and software that is greater than its parts. The AirPods seem to be an exception that reflects the apple of old.

    airport could have evolved into an out of the box mesh system that was trademark Apple easy to set up. And a reference hub for HomeKit that also ‘just worked’. Instead it was neglected. Like far too much of The Mac line.
    blastdoorCaffiendAlex1Nmajorslanantksundaramolsbrian greenDAalsethgilly017patchythepirate

  • Starbucks' nationwide bias training will use iPads

    entropysentropys
    nunzy said:
    This makes sense. Starbucks knows quality. They sell the world's best coffee, and so they need the worlds best technology.
    I remember for the Sydney Olympics the CNN crew stupidly made a big deal about bringing a massive supply of Starbucks coffee beans with them as they could not be sure they could get good coffee outside of USA. The crew were treated with contempt and derision, and given a very hard time for their idea of what made good coffee.

    Incidently Starbucks has not done very well In Australia because it is considered too weak and gauche compared with local product, where a variety of smaller, local roasters selling through shops and chains hold sway. Mum and dad coffee shops seem to do better than franchises. Much more variety, which is unusual and interesting when you consider the lack of options and variety of things we usually have in comparison with the USA.

    And who puts flavouring in their coffee? Americans can be such Philistines!
    nunzyadamcracerhomie3toysandmejmc54watto_cobra

  • Apple's Mac mini now inexcusably getting trounced by cheap Intel hardware

    entropysentropys
    macxpress said:
    Oh boy...here we go! Continuous bitching about the Mac mini. I doubt most here are gonna buy one anyways. 
    Of course not. To be frank, you would have to be a brainless idiot to buy the current insult of a Mac mini.

    I get that most of the money comes from the iPhone, so it’s the priority.  But the most stupid thing about the neglect and/or gimping of pretty all Mac lines over an extended period is that it is mistreating Mac buyers, who are the most loyal long term buyers of all things Apple, and have always been the greatest evangelists for its platforms and ecosystems. Neglecting and deliberately crippling functionality and utility of macs by design, and then failing to at the least keep them up to date is beyond the pale.

    Divorce is ugly. And just like a neglected and spourned spouse, lovers can be turned into passionate haters.

    pastor_macbaconstangcgWerkswilliamlondonAlex1NwozwozelijahgMplsPCheeseFreeze

  • Comparing the Dell XPS 13 9370 versus Apple's 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

    entropysentropys
    k4ever said:
    tjwolf said:
    You mention the XPS has double the SSD storage - but you didn’t give any information about their relative performances.  Not all SSDs are created equal.  Personal example: started a new job last year and they gave me a super powerful Lenovo Windows desktop w. 64gb RAM and a 1TB SSD.  A complete build of our application  - very IO intensive activity -  took 15 seconds.  Very fast compared to my colleague’s hard disk based times (30+ seconds).   When I needed to replace it with a laptop, I got a 2017 15” MBP with 16gb RAM and a 512gb SSD.   It builds the same application in 7 seconds flat.  Because the SSDs in Macs are the fastest on the planet.
    This is brought up a lot and, in my opinion, is one of the most uninformed issues on the planet when it comes to Apple devices. Apple DOES NOT MAKE IT'S OWN SSDs OR RAM! Apple purchases these components from the exact same 3rd party manufacturers as Dell and other Windows PC makers. The difference is that Apple charges more for the exact same SSD and then solders it in so you can replace/upgrade it. On almost ALL Windows laptops, including the XPS, you can replace/upgrade the SSD to whatever size and model you want -- to include whichever one the Macbook is currently using. Most of the time you can do this for less than what the exact same size and model SSD costs in the Macbook. Same with the RAM, although I think Dell solders the RAM in on the XPS line.

    I had this exact same argument with someone in another Apple forum when the 2016 model MBPs came out. I chose to go with a mid-range Windows gaming laptop instead of the MBP. My laptop was faster and more powerful than the highest end 2016 MBP and cost nearly $2000 less: faster processor, faster (and upgradeable) RAM, and faster GPU. The only drawbacks were the battery life (speed comes with a price) and storage. My laptop had a 1TB HDD and an option for NVME SSD that was slower than the one in the MBP, which the other person made it a point to mention (ignoring everything else). I ordered the laptop without an SSD, then bought the exact same SSD as the MBP (the Samsung 960 Pro) for $100 less and installed it in my laptop. Funny thing is, I can upgrade my laptop to the same SSD as the 2018 MBP, which you can't do with a 2016 MBP. When the 2020 MBP comes out, I will also be able to upgrade to that SSD, as long as the NVME standard is still being utilized.
    Sigh:  laptop magazine https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmarks (reformatted table curtesy macrumors, but that is just an extract from laptop magazine). Apple has invested a lot in ssd controllers in recent years, a new file system and the algorithms that go with it.  The sum of the parts is much greater than it seems. 


    Edit: in my view the only negs of this machine is the price, price and price, with graphics perhaps a distant fourth. Whether it is worth it though for the performance is up to the buyer and their needs.

    StrangeDayscgWerkswatto_cobraroundaboutnow

  • A history of the iPad Mini, from life to limbo

    entropysentropys
    Everyone I know that had one loved them. The only people that never loved the mini worked at Apple.

    The main lesson Apple should have learned is never leave a gap in the market. At the time it was introduced, android tablets of smaller screen size were taking sales from the larger iPad. The mini pretty much stopped that, and other tablet makers have pretty well given up these days on putting up a serious contender.

    For my work team, the current mini doesn’t have the power needed to run our GIS based apps without a bit of lag, so we have moved them all to the larger size. I must admit though, the smaller form factor was very convenient, especially once the crew are loaded up with all the other crap they carry. Our local police service also loved them for the same reason.

    yojimbo007muthuk_vanalingamrare commentGeorgeBMacwhite7650unbeliever2irelandargonautmac_128wozwoz

  • Apple being sued because two-factor authentication on an iPhone or Mac takes too much time...

    entropysentropys
    “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
    paul kzeus423DAalsethlkruppmagman1979svanstromrotateleftbytebcodenetmagejaribbs

  • Apple Music loses hip-hop and R&B curator to Spotify

    entropysentropys
    Does that mean curation loses it bias to hip hop and rap? 

    Hip Hip Hooray!
    JWSCbloggerbloggregg thurmanNotsofastDead_Poolpatchythepiratermfpdxberndog[Deleted User]pscooter63

  • 2018 Mac mini: what you need to know

    entropysentropys
    Pro users don’t buy NUCs like this mini.

    I need a new machine real soon now, but will wait to see what the iMac is like, my current iMac is dying from overuse.  
    If I had to buy a machine right now, it would be the i7 mini with minimum ram and ssd. I will update the ram myself. I will wait until someone comes up with a matching external TB3 case that stacks with the mini in space grey, and add an external M.2 SSD. I currently boot my old iMac off a TB2 external SSD anyway, but I would like better than SATA.  No way am I paying Apple’s evil prices for ram and ssd. And if I wanted a dedicated GPU, I am sure there will end up a eGPU case that matches too.

    Cook is making it real hard not to switch to the dark side. The prices are getting stupidly expensive.
    mike54williamlondonargonaut

  • U.S. to investigate planned French tax on Apple, other tech giants [u]

    entropysentropys
    Ecky-Thump said:
    How dare France try to level the playing field.  

    Tax-dodging multinationals have an unfair advantage over small local companies who can’t base their operations in tax havens.
    If US and other foreign corporates were “dodging” tax the solution would be to close the loophole. That France isn’t doing so and instead proposing a new tax suggests there is no dodging and France is exercising its usual protectionist approach to justify its over regulated inefficiencies. Any French company caught up in this tax would be looked after in other ways. In other words, France in reality wants to tip the playing field to make better companies than their domestic mates run uphill.
    cat52henrybayradarthekatwilliamlondonGG1anantksundaram